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Our Life | Наше життя November | Листопад 2020 In the tactics of Postmodernism, Bodnar-Balahutrak appropriates details, such as the Crucifix in the Arezzo Chapel overlaid with photographs of famine victims with swollen feet. She thus pays homage to the universal tragedies that today befall many cultures, but identifies these poignant moments of human condition with tragedies that have been visited upon Ukraine in this century: the nuclear holocaust at Chornobyl in 1989 and the artificial famine of 1933 . Her choice of materials describes her psychic empathy with the compelling pathos brought about by man-made cataclysms: common use of distressed wood, peeling as in aged gold-leaf, chipped and uneven over the surface, objects worn not by the patina of climatic conditions, but by the layering of transparencies of one hopeless event after another that shred the internal wholesomeness so coveted by the nation. The selling out of the nation, its spiritual values and material treasures, are poignantly brought to the current moment by Soviet ruble coins attached to the frame of Bodnar-Balahutrak’s work. The compositions establish an undeniable link with the format of traditional and conventional icon painting, not only in the use of wax, but also in the slightly recessed internal image, creating a natural border. The faded image of the Theotokos (the Mother of God, protectress and model of faith) is replaced by a ghostly contemporary mother, holding her wanton child in her lap. In another work from this series, the suffering eye of wasted child becomes one with the Madonna’s. The margin, reserved as a convention in icons to elaborate in episodic narratives on the life of the saint, contains a wooden relief form of a visibly empty village house, totally abandoned and lifeless. Frames are painted black, as if representing memorial portraits carried in ritual processions. All the surfaces, whether they consist of soil, dried flowers, or other plants, coins, and/or ruble notes, are scored, torched, or covered with wax to emphasize the visceral quality of the experience. The torching is an obvious link to the famine during the 1930s when under Stalin’s plans to collectivize farms, those who would not comply found themselves 28 Myroslava Mudrak Professor Emerita of Art History The Ohio State University The Holodomor Art of Lydia Bodnar-Balahutrak “Where Have All the Mallows Gone?” Lydia Bodnar-Balahutrak, Another Kind of Icon #10 , 1995. 13½ x 10½ in. Gold leaf, photocopy, embroidery. Holodomor Exhibition & Education Collection; E. Morgan Williams, Trustee. Lydia Bodnar-Balahutrak, Another Crucifixion , 1993. 17 x 13 in. Gold leaf, photocopy, mm/paper. Lydia Bodnar-Balahutrak, Stalin’s Victims Return , 1991. 20 x 16 in. Oil, photocopy, mm/paper. Collection of Nancy Reddin Kienholz, Hope, Idaho, and Berlin, Germany.
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